Death Valley

ok, this will be a photo intensive entry, so modem people: give up now.

We took 95 north past the federal prison

and its warnings not to pick up hitchhikers (duh! I suppose they should add an especially strong caution against picking up people with metal balls attached to their legs who try to pay you in cigarettes as well), up through all the stark and beautiful desert basins until we reached Beatty. We were orignially planning on going north and across the mountains through Westgard, but decided to take the much more scenic route through Death Valley National Park, some of my old lizard catching stomping grounds. I had always wanted to see "The Racetrack", but the ranger told us that we needed 4wd with good clearance, so it will have to wait for some other time. Instead, we took 374

To the Sand Dunes near Stovepipe Wells. We parked on the road and walked to the second highest dune, passing some truly spectacular scenery


At the base of some of the dunes were mud flats

and eventually we ended up on at our destination


We ate lunch, then started walking back

and on the way decided to do some dune jumping




and ended up with a little sand in our shoes

and a sickening grind in the focus motor of my Fuji rangefinder. I did manage to get some nice transparencies though!

We continued on to Mosaic Canyon

which is surrounded by water sculpted cobble walls

The whole way up I was picturing what a flash flood woutld be like.

Finally, we continued on through the park, resisting the temptation to frolic at the Panamint Dunes, and on to Bishop.

Miles: 289